Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom
Session Coordinator: Gina Merys Mahaffey
Saint Louis University

The Evolution of Eco-Composition: Interdependent Pedagogy and Theory

For a little over seven years, now, eco-composition has been gaining attention and interest. Eco-composition started with a group of scholars, members of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, interested in environmental rhetoric. Teachers who were bringing environmental issues into their composition classrooms also joined, and in 1998, the first sessions to officially use the term “eco-composition” appeared at the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Since then eco-composition theory and pedagogy have both grown, depending on each other as practitioners and theorists work to define this field. Involved in these conversations since the beginning, I will discuss how pedagogy and theory (and politics) have cross-pollinated to grow a new field in composition studies.

Kaye Adkins
Missouri Western State College

A New Learning Environment: Writing in TOPIC/ICON

The English Department at Texas Tech University has been using TOPIC (Texas Tech Online/Print Integrate Curriculum) and ICON (Interactive Composition Online) for their first year composition teaching since 2002. TOPIC/ICON enhances composition courses by enabling students to participate in a variety of tasks and course-related activities while online; students are able to quickly and easily access syllabi and assignments, post drafts, critique each other’s works, and check their grades as their work is evaluated. In ICON, class only meets once a week, but students are provided with an intensive and systematical writing practice with different focuses and purposes such as essay writing cycles, peer critiques, and writing reviews. The unique trait of these assignments is that they emphasize composing as a process, as a socially constructed action, and as an act of negotiating multiple perspectives. So the students learn to write by writing, by analyzing how other people write, by revising and reflecting on what they did poorly or well, and by receiving constructive feedback from peers and instructors. Furthermore, within ICON, all grading and commenting is done not by the classroom instructors but by a pool of online graders and is handled anonymously in order to ensure a measure of objectivity in grading and a coherency across the program in the writing criteria applied. However, with all its strengths, TOPIC/ICON also challenges both students and instructors to modify their understanding on what is learning and how learning actually takes place because this new system seems putting more learning responsibilities on students themselves. This paper will discuss how the theories of writing as a process and as a socially constructed act are applied to TOPIC/ICON successfully and how TOPIC/ICON exerts influences on reshaping student’s and instructor’s learning mentality in ICON community.

Yingqin Liu
Texas Tech University

Theory vs. Practice: Formative Assessment in the Composition Classroom

In the first years of teaching, reflection on assignments, lectures, in-class dynamics, and student performance can border on obsession in the effort to get things “right.” At the university, outside the field of education, there is often little training or discussion about pedagogy. Hired at the same time to teach freshman English and composition, we found ourselves sharing woes, strategies, insights and research. Formative assessment as presented primarily by D. Royce Sadler, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam has been especially useful in teaching composition. Formative assessment’s feedback loop between teacher and student is widely acknowledged as effective in increasing student performance. It is more useful than standard lecturing in our work with primarily first-year students transitioning to college. Furthermore, it is congruent with process theory and the use of portfolios, as well as L.S. Vygotsky’s theories of cognition and Donald Zull’s research on neuroscience’s implications for education. However, where portfolios emphasize empowerment and choice on the part of students, formative assessment also theorizes teacher response. While it is difficult to implement formative assessment fully, due to constraints on instructors, formative assessment has inspired us to review and revise our current practices in order to promote deeper learning.

Dr. Trudi Witonsky and Kevin Smith
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Composition in the Public Sphere: Writing Instruction and the Buffy Syndrome

In our age of instant-download plagiarism, reading deficiencies, slashed budgets, adjunct-labor dependency, grammar-panicked assessment evaluators, and record low prioritization of support for composition teaching, it is tempting to seek and attach importance to publicity and concern from “outside” writing programs and English departments. But is such attention necessarily beneficial? The possible gains from vocal attention in the community, political discourse, legislative bodies, and institutional administrative sectors could easily come with damaging strings attached, and misguided (if well-meaning) policies that do more harm than good. I have monitored the popular press across the USA for months, reading and categorizing the kinds of topics and issues about the postsecondary teaching of writing that have made it “out onto the street.” The news is not good, and confirms my suspicions about a particular kind of denial among academics that I call “The Buffy Syndrome.”

Cynthia L. Jeney
Missouri Western State College